Manhattan

Manhattan directed by Woody Allen. Written by Allen and Marshall Brickman

"We have laughs together. I care about you. Your concerns are my concerns. We have great sex. What's six months if we love each other?"

I was 22 or so when Manhattan came out. I wasn't much older than 17-year-old Mariel Hemingway when Allen and Brickman put those words in her mouth. Mariel played a boarding school girl named Tracy who is dating Woody's Isaac Davis, a 42-year-old comedy writer. In this scene, as I recall, Tracy consoles Isaac, who is distraught when he learns that Tracy is going off to school.

I distinctly remember two different reactions as I watched the scene unfold. In the first place I thought the notion of a little guy like Woody Allen carrying on with a 5-foot-11 snow skier like Hemingway without getting broken in half to be easily as funny as any of the jokes in the script. But I mainly found the scene where a high school kid speaks words of love and empathy to her adult lover to be profoundly creepy.

Those lines came back to me when I learned that Allen married his former companion Mia Farrow's adopted daughter. He was still involved with Farrow when he started fooling around with the daughter. This might not have been incest but it was in the same area code. And they came back to me during the Roy Moore [Alabama U.S. Senate] campaign as well as with the seemingly endless recent revelations concerning men using the power that comes from age or money to take advantage of younger women or girls even.

I doubt that Manhattan could get made in this moment of #metoo. And rightfully so. It probably should not have been made back then with Tracy's character in the script.

I was 22 or so when Manhattan came out. I was a law student. I guess we hadn't gotten to statutory rape yet. Because all I knew was that the scene was creepy. I was too young to know just why.

MovieStyle on 02/23/2018